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The ROI of S E O varies from one industry to the next. How valuable would it be to your business to come up as the top recommendation when your customers are actively searching for your services?

Let’s look at an example. 320 people search for the exact phrase “event venue Houston” every month (not to mention those who search for slight variants, like “event venues Houston” etc).

Being the first result on Google would bring ~110 people to your website every month who were actively searching for event venues in Houston, many of whom had never heard of your brand before. Assuming 0.5% of those people booked an event venue JUST ONCE, this one search term would bring you 6-7 new customers every year.

Search engines look at 3 primary factors when trying to understand all of the websites in their index: authority, relevancy, and crawlability.

Authority is a measure of how reputable your website is in the eyes of Google and other search engines.

Relevancy helps Google to understand what your website is about so it can send the right people to your website.

If you type “shoes ” into Google, Google will sift through trillions of web pages and order them based on how trustworthy they are, and how relevant they are to “shoes .”

S E O campaign is all about helping Google to better understand your website, while also increasing your authority so you start appearing for the search terms that are most valuable to your business.

Content marketing is the cornerstone of S E O: Search engines like Google are obsessed with giving searchers what they’re looking for. When search engines find websites that provide useful information, they reward those websites by ranking them higher in search results.

The more high-quality content you write, the higher you will rank for the search terms that your customers are looking for.

Keywords, content, and SEO tend to be the focus when you’re trying to
direct more traffic to your website. Images are a powerful tool for traffic as
well, but unfortunately, many marketers aren’t using them to their fullest
potential.

Images are content as well, which can be easy to forget. In fact, images are an essential part of any content marketing effort. Users are also searching for visual content, so if you’re not using images as part of your SEO, you’re missing out on valuable opportunities.

How Do Images Boost Traffic?

Images serve many purposes for your site, such as:

Aesthetics: Images make your site more visually appealing and easier to digest, which keeps people on your site longer and decreases the bounce rate.

Image search: Images pull traffic from image searches, which may direct a different audience to your site than other searches.

Social media shares: Images get more shares and engagement on social media than text-only posts. The more your content is shared, the larger your potential audience is and the more likely you are to get readers for your posts.

Optimizing for Image Search

Images need to be optimized just like anything else. Optimizing images
isn’t much different than optimizing other types of content, and they rank
similarly. The first image on the image search results page is the equivalent
of the first website to come up in a standard search.

Image search has more results, however, and people view images
differently. Because of this, it’s important to optimize your images to be sure
they’re close to the top.

Here’s how:

File Names

Cameras use a series of letters and numbers as the default name for
images. Unfortunately, this doesn’t do much to boost your SEO.

Whenever possible, rename your images with a relevant title that
reflects the content, which gives a search engine an idea of what it is.

Alt Tags

Image alt tags are metadata that help a search engine index an image.
Editing alt tags not only improves your ranking, but it also boosts your SEO
overall.

An ideal alt tag description is short, but filled with keywords. It
should accurately describe the image for visually impaired users as well.

Compression

Your images should be as big as possible, but use as little storage
space as possible, which can be done with compression. Tools like Compressor.io
can be used to reduce the storage size and retain the quality of the image.

Now that we know how to optimize, let’s take a look at how to use image search to direct traffic to your website.

Use Your Own Images

Stock photography has its purposes, but if you’re consistently using
stock photos, it’s not going to help your site. Stock photos don’t accurately
reflect your brand, and they give your site a disorganized look, which is then
communicated to your visitors.

Original images, on the other hand, show your visitors that you put the
extra effort into the look of your site and the overall image of your brand.
Original images are also traced back to your site, which means that you’re more
likely to earn backlinks when others use them for their own content. They’ll
also show up earlier in the image search results, giving you an SEO boost.

If you don’t have the resources to create your own images, it’s
acceptable to use stock images. However, you should be doing all you can to
limit your use of stock photography and provide as many original images as you
can.

Related Image Keywords

Just like text content, image content has a primary keyword that’s
included in the file name and alt tag. You should still be using related image
keywords, however, to give your strategy more variety and to target searchers
who want to find your image but may not be using the proper keyword.

This may seem like extra work, but you’d be surprised at how different
the images can be between similar keywords. When you cast a wide net with
related keywords, you’re reaching a much larger audience.

If you need some assistance in coming up with related keywords, just
look at the image keyword suggestions at the top of an image search results page.
This will give you an idea of what others are searching, which you can use as
part of your own strategy.

Relevant Images

Relevant images are images that are directly related to the topic. While
this may seem clear, it’s not always the case. Many people use images that are
unrelated to their topic to enhance their posts, which directs unrelated
traffic to your site.

For example, you may use a pop culture reference that relates to one
section of a blog post. Because of this, anyone searching for that pop culture
reference will find themselves on your blog post, when they were actually
looking for entertainment. When they discover the actual purpose of your site,
they’re likely to bounce.

Infographics

Infographics are an
excellent way to boost your SEO and create custom imagery that is easy for your
readers to digest. They drive thousands of visitors to your site and help you
establish yourself as an authority as well.

Not every bit of content needs an infographic, but they can help with
content that is research intensive or contains a lot of data. By putting it in
a quick, clear infographic format, you’re allowing your readers to quickly skim
the information to get the answers they need.

Watermarks

Watermarking is common with artists and photographers, but not so much
for business owners who create their own custom images. Watermarking can be
used to copyright your images, which is always a good thing, but it has another
purpose — traffic.

Watermarking your images tells people where the image came from using a
link, so it gives you credit and tells viewers where to go to find similar
content. This is a good way to get traffic to your site and social pages, no
matter where the image is shared.

Conclusion

Image SEO is powerful, but few marketers are using it to their
advantage. Keywords and meta descriptions are important, but images can give
you that extra edge over the competition.

People always need images for their own posts or videos, so driving
traffic from optimized images is quick and easy. If you put some effort into
optimizing your images and combining them with your other SEO tactics, you
should see an increase in rankings in no time.

Meta description: Find out how to use image search to boost your SEO and
drive more relevant traffic to your website for better leads and more
profitability.